Makes sense, thanks. I think I just want to highlight that hypotheses that are ātightly tied to empirical evidenceā still do sneak in some non-empirical premises, mostly about how to do induction, though of course some such premises can be more controversial than others. (Related post.)
If what you mean to say is something like the following, Iām sympathetic: Conscious Subsystems is more speculative in the sense that it violates Occamās razor ā weāre positing lots of extra minds we can never verify. Whereas, a principle like āif two animalsā pain-related brain regions have the same neuron-firing rate, we should expect the intensity of their suffering to be the same all else equalā seems privileged by Occam, even if we canāt empirically verify this either.
((ETA: Feel free to ignore if the above misses your point, I donāt mean to put words in your mouth!) I might quibble about how we cash out āall else equal.ā In practice, Iād think we donāt have nearly fine-grained enough neurobiological evidence to apply that principle. So Iād worry that many of our inferences about comparisons of suffering intensity hinge on somewhat arbitrary judgment calls.)
Makes sense, thanks. I think I just want to highlight that hypotheses that are ātightly tied to empirical evidenceā still do sneak in some non-empirical premises, mostly about how to do induction, though of course some such premises can be more controversial than others. (Related post.)
If what you mean to say is something like the following, Iām sympathetic: Conscious Subsystems is more speculative in the sense that it violates Occamās razor ā weāre positing lots of extra minds we can never verify. Whereas, a principle like āif two animalsā pain-related brain regions have the same neuron-firing rate, we should expect the intensity of their suffering to be the same all else equalā seems privileged by Occam, even if we canāt empirically verify this either.
((ETA: Feel free to ignore if the above misses your point, I donāt mean to put words in your mouth!) I might quibble about how we cash out āall else equal.ā In practice, Iād think we donāt have nearly fine-grained enough neurobiological evidence to apply that principle. So Iād worry that many of our inferences about comparisons of suffering intensity hinge on somewhat arbitrary judgment calls.)
Thanks for the productive exchange!